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There's a similar story of a thief who broke into the house of an old woman who was a devout Buddhist. He tore up the place looking for things to take, but finding nothing, he left. Some distance from her house, she catches up to him. She'd been running, and hands him several coins of very small worth, happy to have found something to give him.

The thief snatches the coins and runs away. He repents of his evil ways and becomes a great doer of good.

This kind of "pure heart" trope runs through many Japanese folk tales.

Right. I can think of a few others. I don't know if I read it like I'm supposed to. I enjoy these stories because they're so hard for me to understand. Harder than Kant even. The pure heart eludes my understanding in some way. Maybe I've read too much Nietzsche.